Jill Seymour MEP: The UK is big enough and bold enough to fight our own battles on the global stage

Guest Blogger, 22 April 2016

The most important decision of our lifetime is almost upon us. Do we decide to stay in the European Union, or vote to leave?

As a UKIP front-bench spokesman who has seen the workings of Brussels bureaucrats at disturbingly close quarters, I’m sure you’ll not be surprised that I’m campaigning with all my might for ‘Vote Leave’.

Why? Because I believe the people who know what’s best for the UK, will always the people of the UK themselves.

We are big enough and bold enough to fight our own battles on the global stage – regaining full control over our laws, our borders, our foreign policy, and how we make our trade deals.

Speaking to visitors to my constituency offices and around the country, I can sense the uncertainty out there. If truth be told, no-one really knows exactly how things will play out if we do vote to leave the EU on June 23.

It will be a time of change, for sure, and our country’s business will be conducted very differently, going forward. But one thing is for certain . . . we would have nothing to fear.

We’d negotiate a new UK-EU deal based on free trade and friendly co-operation. We’d end the supremacy of EU law. We’d stop sending £350 million every week to Brussels and instead spend it on our UK-based priorities, like the NHS. We’d regain control.

The European Commission is now planning a fresh EU Treaty. So far, every re-draft has given Brussels more power, and this latest version is planned to take more power from EU members, including tax policy.

A vote to leave and a better, friendlier relationship with the EU is much safer than giving Brussels yet more power and money.

This obsession with the view that being part of a bigger club is automatically better, is happening right on our doorsteps too. Here in my home county, Shropshire Council has now joined Telford & Wrekin Council in applying to join the West Midlands Combined Authority.

They say it will allow us to play a key role in the future economic growth of the wider region.

Rubbish. We will end up drifting into a position where we play second fiddle to the big city might of Birmingham, whose urban priorities are going to be far removed from our own.

Why are we so afraid to stand on our own two feet?

Whether it’s the European Union, or the West Midlands Combined Authority, I’m in no doubt. We’re better off out…

Jill Seymour is a UKIP MEP for the West Midlands and has been since 2014. You can visit her website here.